


Define: Infidelity

by Anonymous



Series: Femmeslash February 2014 [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: Asexual Character, Celosia/OFC, Celosia/OMC, F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:37:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in·fi·del·i·ty <br/>ˌinfiˈdelitē/  <br/>noun  <br/>1. the action or state of being unfaithful to a spouse or other sexual partner.  <br/>"her infidelity continued after her marriage"  <br/>synonyms: unfaithfulness, adultery, cuckoldry, disloyalty, extramarital sex;</p>
            </blockquote>





	Define: Infidelity

**  
Define** : Infidelity

in·fi·del·i·ty   
ˌinfiˈdelitē/   
noun   
1\. the action or state of being unfaithful to a spouse or other sexual partner.   
"her infidelity continued after her marriage"   
synonyms: unfaithfulness, adultery, cuckoldry, disloyalty, extramarital sex;

* * *

Celosia was turning fourteen, and she was in love with the most beautiful girl.

It was precisely the sort of love a fourteen year old ought to be capable of. It blotted out her thoughts and circled around her throat, and it was sweet and suffocating. She looked around the kitchen table with a grin as large as her heart, and thought distantly that she was very lucky indeed.

Genevive had agreed to come to her birthday as a guest. In fact, as the only guest, since her parents and two older brothers hardly constituted real party.

She was among the last in her year to turn fourteen, with the vast majority of birthdays having been in the preceeding fall or winter. But she liked her late spring celebrations, on the edge of summer. They meant she could go outside, afterwards, and play with her pokémon. Even if it was raining during the party, the wild, warm weather meant the sun would be out soon enough.

For now, she studied her cake and her girlfriend in equal measure. Layers of crepe slathered with strawberry jam and whipped cream, all covered in spiced apples. The treat bore no resemblance whatsoever to Genevieve but Celosia knew from brief and idolized experience that Gen was sweeter and more of a delight.

And after her family had eaten, and chatted, and her small assortment of gifts had been given- a fresh Luxury ball from her brothers, two candy bars from her parents, and a knotwork bracelet from Genevieve- the young couple wandered outside to lounge around route fifteen.

They spent the entire summer like that, laying in the leaf litter, starting at the sun filtering through the gaps in the leaves. Twice, they traveled to Dendemille, three day walks taken under the protection of Celosia’s Electrike. It was a languid summer of held hands, and whispered conversations, and kisses stolen under the dappled shadows in the cover of the trees.

Light and airy things, gestures of affection almost entirely unrelated to the baser hungers Celosia sometimes woke up panting with in the middle of the night or under the heated assault of the shower.

Their love was entirely befitting fourteen year olds. Innocent and chaste, addictive but safe. And as the leaves on route fifteen began to tint into orange and gold, they began to drift apart. Never anything official, but on Christmas, there were certainly no invitations to each others’ homes.

* * *

Celosia was sixteen, and she was in love with the most gorgeous boy.

True, he said vicious things about the other girls in town. He had said them about her, probably, before they had started dating. He would say them again after they were done, certainly. And, ever since he’d realized that her workshop was hers, and not one of her brothers’ he’d always stared at it like a personal insult. But none of that mattered in the least.

Not when his skin was dark and warm and supple beneath her fingers. Not as she dragged her nails delicately up the taut lines of his abdomen, watching the hardwon muscles twitch. Silas spent an hour or more in the gym every day, attacking bags and machines with his Gloom beside him, the both of them working towards a very particular goal. Something he mentioned often enough, but which escaped her at the moment. It was a stupid dream, anyway, that much she could recall.

She pulled his shirt off him, lacing her fingers together behind his head as they kissed luxuriously, all tongues and lips and teeth, breath mingling together. She could feel his heart beating beneath her, pounding through her breasts deliciously, every part of her body growing more sensitive, until the way his hands rucked her own shirt up, over and off was overload enough that she groaned into him. She fell against his chest. His fingers were so clumsy and slow on the clasp of her bra that she forced herself to her elbows, grinning down at him as she reached one handed behind herself and uncaught the hooks.

From there, he was quick enough.

She felt fuzzy and heavy and distant, and when he put those muscles to use and flipped them both in a deft little move, she stared up at him half lidded and with the stupidest, syrupy smile.

He was such a waste of a pretty face, going into the Ranger Corps instead of leaving with her for Lumiose, but she wasn’t sure she really would have wanted him anyway.

She didn’t love Silas, as such.

Just the meat and bones of him. Just his rough, calloused fingers tracing over her waist and hips and cunt with lush intent. The way he tongued her open and made her toes curl and breasts heave. She adored the feel of him inside her, over her, pinning her down and giving her something hot and hard to bear down on, the sharp snap of hips and thighs making her smaller body edge further and further up the mattress. The sound of his voice breaking when he came, and the way he sometimes managed to drive her all the way from moaning and screaming back around to silence.

Her love for him was physical and chemical. His body was addictive, but he was a pig and an idiot.

Whatever she loved, it certainly wasn’t his heart or mind.

* * *

Celosia was eighteen, and she was in love with the most romantic city.

Lumiose was everything Laverre had never been. It glittered in the night, and shone in the day. It was always busy with potential and possibility. Where Laverre had been relaxation and rural luxe, Lumiose was lights, camera, action.

Perhaps a little too much action, frankly. But the point of being in love with something was to look past, or even take joy in, its faults. And after a year and a half here, Celosia had learned to read the pulse of the city as easily as the moods of the customers she rolled to and from every afternoon, skates strapped over her sneakers. A dull and draining business, but she could grin and flirt her way to a steady paycheck, and that was what mattered.

Robotics was not a hobby for the faint of heart or light of wallet, after all. And now that she had access to real resources, she could finally start becoming the designer she knew she was. Being the best in Laverre had not been a stark achievement.

Being the best in Lumiose, that would take more doing.

But she charged against the challenge every day, smiling and stalwart, all for the sake of doing what she loved.

* * *

Celosia was twenty, and in love with the idea of love.

Her girlfriend of the last two months, however, she was less enamored by.

Well, no. She adored Aurelie. She wanted nothing more than to hold her late into the night, peppering light kisses across her face and neck, studying the smooth curves of her body and clinging to every word that poured from her soft pink lips.

She she was less enthusiastic about the actual sex. The both of them were assuredly modern young women with healthy appetites. It was just.

Something about her femininity, about seam between her legs and the long, cool, tapered fingers. About the graceful neck and high voice and delicate features. It was such a  _waste_. Because she loved Aurelie, with the same heartstopping fervor she recalled from long ago fantasies of childish romance. Everything about her emotions and their relationship was perfect.

But she recoiled from the actual acts of lovemaking now, where she never had before. They became an arduous responsibility that left her feeling filthy and dissatisfied at the end. It was the cause of fights, and cruel accusations. Twice, now, Aurelia had said she wasn’t  _real,_ that a history of men made her a liar. She had accused Celosia of playing an immature game of hearts to try to make herself look more liberal than she was.

She was beginning to realize maybe being in love was not quite enough.

* * *

Celosia was twenty two, and in trouble.

She wasn’t an idiot. She hadn’t expected to just waltz into the capitol city and make a name for herself overnight. Everyone with half a brain ended up in Lumiose eventually, after all. Competition was steep to the point of being carnivorous. Cannibalistic.

But she was careful, too. She’d made sure to only get a postage stamp of an apartment in a questionably reputable neighborhood, depending on her assorted tinkertoy machines to keep the place well protected while she spent every day working a shift at a café on South Boulevard, pulling in a steady 25 paid hours a week. The rest of her income came by commissions, which were rare given the surfeit of reputable machinists in Lumiose, but regular enough.

She’d had three, at the time.

Anyone wanting to ransack her tiny space was in for a nasty surprise, and she hadn’t had any problems before now. But somewhere between her shift at the café and her hour and a half stroll through the back alleys with Mimi brutally subjugating the little punks who tried to challenge her to a battle and collecting her winnings, there had been an incident.

And now her single room studio was completely empty. All the half finished commissions, all her experimental work and casual tinkering. Her bed, and her computers and her books. It would take months worth of minimum wage checks to replace the money she’d invested in hard to find parts and custom cut pieces from the machine shop on Hivernal. To say nothing of the fact that she’d sunk all three of her advances from clients into those pieces.

She spent the entire evening clutching Mimi to her chest, ignoring the spark and tingle of the manectric’s fur as they fed on eachother's discomfort. She was a hopeless, crying wreck, and she thought without a doubt that she was going to die. She couldn’t bear the idea of fleeing back to Laverre, even if her parents would have set her up in her old room in a heartbeat. She was clever and crafty and strong, wasn’t she? She was supposed to succeed in this stupid city, damn it!

But she had no savings, had been living hand to mouth for years, carefully circling her thoughts around the tenuous nature of her position, not allowing herself to succumb to the fact that she was at risk.

And now she was forced to stare at her last five years of her life dead in the face, without romance or deflection, and choke on it.

The next morning, aching all over from having slumped over onto the bare floor at some point, she managed to shower, letting the steam pull the wrinkles from what were now the only clothes to her name, and rang the police from her cell.

They were there in a few hours, and gone in a few more, leaving her with only an itemized police report to give to her insurance provider for reimbursement for her loses. As if she had insurance. As if she had anything.

She went to work that afternoon for lack of anything else to do. Maybe if she just pretended for a little while that everything was all right, she wouldn't completely break down.

A young man came to the café, perhaps five, seven years older than her. He was lovely. Tall and broad and regal in ways that her past boyfriends- if one could call them that, really, rather than one month stands- had not ever been. His posture was too stiff, like he was pretending to be someone better than he was, and he spoke in cold and dismissive tones, not quite condescending to the lowly waitress but dangerously close.

He also remembered her name, and loitered until the end of her shift.

She had every intention of following him home, since that was clearly what he was after, and using his body as he would use hers, and then perhaps using his bed too. He looked like he could afford a  _very_  nice bed.

Instead, he told her that he was familiar with her work. That he was expanding his current philanthropic interests. That he planned to revolutionize communications in the world, and funnel that money back into improving it again, for the betterment of man and beast. He fed Mimi the green macarons that she loved, and he spoke with a restrained passion that had been absent from his time in the café. His words warmed his voice, and his shoulders relaxed, and by the time he actually mentioned the salary, the on-site employee housing, the resource budget, she had already been sold six times over.

In the following years, she would consider it a few times. But she never did get around to asking if he’d arranged for her apartment to be ransacked. Maybe that was for the best. She liked Lysandre, and didn’t particularly want to have to kill him slowly.

* * *

Celosia was twenty five, and this time she was deeply, deeply in loathing. Justus was a skinny, obnoxious, blond fuckwit. He was also in charge of persuading the projection mechanisms that had become Celosia’s life into playing nice with the high level languages the software department used. Certainly a respectable amount of machine language had to be in her repertoire, but she was an engineer, not a programmer. And every time she’d been forced to step away from the ongoing miniaturization project to deal with his utter incompetence, she filed an even more vitriolic complaint with human resources.

Eventually, she’d been forced to take it up with Lysandre directly, and lo and behold, ten days later a new face strolled into her wing of the labs.

The first time she saw Bryony, her hair was loose and fluttering in the breeze of the door, where the room’s positive pressure seal ensured no wayward dust could wander in. She was wearing the vivid red coveralls that anyone who came into the space was required to use, to keep their dead skin cells from shedding everywhere and ruining sensitive, bared electronics.

None of her assistants looked up and the soft shush of the door, but Celosia had. And she was glad of the action, because it meant she caught a glimpse of the woman’s green, green eyes before the tinted safety goggles covered them.

"Celosia Correa?”

She was distantly grateful for the fact that her own goggles were well tinted too- imperative for working with solder on the larger prototypes- because she hadn’t been expecting that voice to come out of that body. The new woman was tall, true, but it was all legs. She looked almost gawky, moved with the uncomfortable gait of someone who spent most of her time sitting down, and even beneath the shapeless coveralls was clearly of a balletic build more than a jazz dancer’s. So what business did she have talking in a low, throaty tone that sounded like smoke and breath and a storm carried on the mistral safe outside of sturdy walls?

She had to physically shake herself before she remembered to nod. “You’re here to make sure M. Bellamy is never allowed to step foot into my reputable facilities again, right?”

"Oh no,” She replied slowly, and Celosia wondered how much talking it would take to convince her to paint her lips up so she’d have more of an excuse to watch them move. “I suspect our employer has made quite certain he won’t be walking anywhere in the city for at least a few years. It seems he values your opinion highly, Madame Correa.”

"'demoiselle.” Celosia corrected quickly, “You can call me Celosia, though. Tu’s and all.”

She couldn’t actually see the woman’s eyebrows move, behind her goggles. But she could see the way her forehead wrinkled on one side, and hear the soft huff of amused surprise. That was enough.

“Bryony, then.” The woman offered a hand to be shaken, and Celosia did not kiss her knuckles, though it was a gargantuan effort. It would have been unbearably cheesy and wildly inappropriate. “But, I’ll be making the rest of them call me Doctor Racine.”

"My very own doctor! How fancy.” Celosia was certain her smile had far too much teeth in it, but should couldn't quite tamp it down.

"I am rolling my eyes very hard, back here.” The woman- Bryony- tapped the frame of her goggles. “I want you to know that.”

“Whatever you say,  _doctor_  Bryony.” Celosia sniffed dismissively, as much as one could while grinning like and idiot at a pretty girl, and gestured vaguely in the direction of the computer terminal that was, blissfully, no longer Justus's. “Go and fuss with the catastrophe your predecessor left you. Good luck deciphering those comments, by the way.That guy was an idiot. If you get me a working call method by lunch, I’ll buy, even if its Frankenstein’s own self-referential mess. Let the guys up in software handle it from there.”

Bryony laughed, a low restrained noise that seemed to come more from her chest than her mouth, and Celosia knew she was completely gone. Bought, sold and delivered. It was going to be a problem, she could could feel it trailing ominously up her spine. But, she didn’t care.

“So  _you’re_  the reason we kept getting those horrific hardware-limitations updates?”

"Nah, that was Bellamy. And now it’ll be you, just you wait and see. Off you get!”

Bryony had to buy her own lunch, but for the first time in as long as Celosia could remember, her inbox wasn’t a landslide of interdepartmental complaints at the end of the week.

They ate together every day, and while her career had always been a pleasure for her, there was something inestimable and wondrous about having someone on hand who understood how to be a genius in the same field without having to be in constant competition.

And on the day they met a development milestone on schedule rather than two weeks behind, Celosia kissed her partner. Almost an accident at first, too many months of simmering interest held at by by professional intimacy. Then Bryony kissed back, and it became a thing of purpose.

Celosia was twenty five, and Bryony was twenty eight, and they were in love.

* * *

Being in love was unexpectedly difficult.

Well, no, not exactly. Bryony lived in her own place, while Celosia still kept the small on-site suite she’d been given when she first started working with Lysandre. They had their own spaces and didn’t have to constantly be in eachother’s hair. They worked together seamlessly, to the point of occasionally finishing eachother’s sentences. They had fielded no less than six accusations of being sickeningly cute.

But for fuck’s sakes, they’d been kissing and working and occasionally sleeping in the same bed, once even naked, for three months. And at no point had Bryony made any sort of move on her. Which, admittedly, Celosia hadn’t exactly been gung ho about it either. But this was now the longest relationship she’d ever been in, and she was beginning to feel more than a little guilty about the amount of nights she spent with her vibrator in the shower, thinking of increasingly florid scenarios.

And none of them ever involved Bryony, as such. Not exactly.

It was a mess, and she hated it. When they were at work, or watching films, or anything together, it was easy to forget it. But alone, or half asleep, or just in between thoughts, the idea reared its head again. If nothing else, _nothing_  else, she at least owed it to Bryony to actually show her that she cared. And the way to do that was physical.

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t  _good_  at it. She hadn’t had a phenomenal amount of practice, but she also had a vagina of her very own and the parts were more or less the same and  _that was the precise problem_.

So, Celosia kept putting it off, and Bryony didn’t seem to care, and it was beginning to drive her insane. She ought to be glad Bryony wasn’t pushy. She  _was_  glad. She was just so  _guilty_  too.

When the moment came that she actually  _did_  manage to swallow her nerves and tuck her thigh between Bryony’s own one night while they laid in Bry’s unreasonably large bed and kissed at length, grinding against her slowly, Celosia thought she was well prepared for any response.

“What are you  _doing_ ,” however, was not in the expected list. Bryony's voice was high and strained in the way it usually only sounded when a new hardware upgrade made bits of her interface coding inoperable.

It was so familiar and so completely bizarre that Celosia couldn’t help being honest, the words shocked out of her. “I dunno, probably fucking you?”

Bryony actually put both her hands on Celosia’s thigh and  _pushed_  like a primary schooler shoving at someone sitting too close to them on the bleachers. Then she was rolling them both over, sitting across Celosia’s legs and glaring down at her sternly. “ _Why_  would you do that?”

"'Cause I love you?”

Bryony’s glare lost its heat. Her entire face melted into a soft, sad look, and Celosia suspected she had done something terribly, terribly wrong because if she wasn’t mistaken, that was a  _crying_  look and-

“Really? You pick now to say that? Right now?” Bryony curled into herself, and Celosia couldn't bring herself to touch her, scared she would make everything worse, unsure what she'd even broken. “Cela, get out of my house.”

* * *

They didn’t speak for three weeks and Celosia couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong, but she figured they were broken up now. Bryony had been mysteriously returned to the software team, and the new girl, Mable, was _terrifying_  for reasons Celosia couldn’t put her finger on. There was just something in the way she casually threatened disembowelment over improper documentation that left everyone speechless with fear. The fact that she spent half her time reading horribly dense anatomy texts with graphic dissection figures didn't help.

Productivity plummeted, and it was only half because Mable lacked Bry’s detailed technical knowledge.

Celosia found and fucked eight men, different ones every night, in the interim. And it was almost enough to keep her distracted. Until she bundled them out of her quarters and spent the rest of her time sobbing violently, anyway.

* * *

When Bryony finally, finally, thank every legend from Arceus to Zygarde and back, returned to the engineering department, Celosia said nothing all morning.

But when they broke for lunch, she was glued to Bryony’s side, as she had always been, and bubbling increasingly frantic apologies as they stripped their coveralls and goggles.

She didn’t dare touch her, certain that she wasn't allowed. But then Bryony was grabbing Celosia’s hand and interlocking their fingers, and pulling Celosia’s still rambling mouth down against her shoulder in a hug that should have been awkward and painful but blessedly wasn’t. It was harder to talk with her mouth full of jersey blend cotton, so she didn’t, and Bryony spoke for her.

“C’mon, Cela, we’re going to go to your room and have a chat.”

* * *

“I don’t get it.” Was Celosia’s response to the entire conversation. Which had mostly been a lecture, like being back in school. A knowledgeable body talking at length, and her interjecting with questions every once in a while.

“Cela, it is quite possibly  _the_  easiest thing in the entire world to ‘get.’” Between the heady relief and the fact that Bryony’s low, dry voice was just so completely incompatible with the air quotes she insisted on using, Celosia figured she couldn’t be held accountable for her laughter.

“Well, yeah, I mean, on paper but like. Not  _ever_? That’s the thing that gets me.”

Bryony rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling, and still wearing the obnoxious green lipstick Celosia had bought her on their two month anniversary, so it didn’t really have much effect. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I the one here who has somehow managed to cut herself along a romantic/sexual binary so completely that she spent six months of a relationship thinking she owed another woman sex, but couldn’t bring herself to do it because she likes cock almost as much as she hates men? I don’t think you get to talk about being hard to believe.”

Celosia laughed louder, and curled into Bryony’s side comfortably. “You should say cock again, it’s hilarious.”

“Dear Arceus, you’re a  _child_.” Bryony said, punctauting the remark with a sharp smack to the back of Celosia's head which, in honesty, she would probably treasure forever.

She blinked up tat the other woman, pouting as prettily as she could manage with her entire body shaking with fizzy joy. “Does that make you my mommy or my teacher?”

"It makes me question why I even put up with you.”

"'Cause you love me.”

It was meant to be a joke. Instead, the annoyance drained out of Bryony's posture, and she flopped onto the bed beside Celosia. Tucked herself in at her side, boneless and soppy.

"Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Celosia wondered how many nights Bryony might have been crying quiet obscenities at the empty spaces of her own home.

* * *

It was Celosia who came up with the idea. She talked Bryony over to it slowly, because Bry would really, deeply have preferred it if Celosia kept her horrible sexcapades to herself. But Celosia was willing to take all the time in the world to wheedle and poke. Always careful to back away if Bryony seemed too skittish about the conversation.

But it was a perfect solution, as far as Cela was could see. Bry loved controlling people. Celosia would almost say she got off on it, except for the obvious reasons why that turn of phrase need not apply. But either way, she enjoyed people obeying her. She practically owned the entire clean room and everyone who worked in it, for all that they technically fell under Celosia's authority.

It was really a foregone conclusion. Even if, ultimately, Bryony only agreed to it as an indulgence of her girlfriend's ridiculous whims.

That was how they ended up here, Bry sitting prettily in the corner of her own bedroom, eyes trained on Celosia with an intensity she could feel on the back of her shoulders. As she rolled her hips across the man of the hours trousers, small noises caught in the back of her throat, poorly stifled because Bryony had said she didn’t want to have to hear it. At least not until their clothes were off and it was “warranted.”

The air quotes were less amusing now. More ominous.

And then she’d just sat there and  _not_  told them they could undress, and it was like being sixteen again, frotting in her bedroom while her parents were out, and it was miserable and wonderful, and she couldn’t help it when she shivered over whatever-his-name-was, body locking up and whimpering quietly.

“Oh for fuck’s sakes,  _fine_ , off with the shirts then.”

It had just been a little orgasm, something sharp and stark like pinpricks, and she was still desperately hungry, but it had also been enough to make her fingers slow and leaden. Quite possibly to everyone’s surprise, but certainly to Celosia’s own, Bryony’s manicured hands slapped hers down lightly, and then copied the gesture on the man’s, before unbuttoning them both with clinical efficiency.

She only kissed Celosia, though, deeply and thoroughly and with something almost like intent, except it wasn’t. Perhaps a claim then. Ownership marked out in a wet show of tongues and lips that had- what  _was_  his name? a girl’s name, Sabine, possibly- groaning underneath her.

"What if,” Bryony offered with a casual cruelty in her tone as she unzipped Celosia’s skirt and retreated back to her perch on the sidelines, “I told you that I want my bedroom back as soon as possible, Cela. And then to you, Augustine, I said I don't want her to be able to walk straight before Tuesday. Are the orders contradictory? I can't quite tell.”

They were not, in fact, contradictory.

* * *

Celosia was twenty eight, and had been happily in love with her life and her girlfriend for a full two and a half years, on the day the Holo Caster went public.

Obviously, there were celebrations throughout the entire labs. Corporate parties that came equipped with a polite string quartet and plenty of champagne. These were followed by less corporate ones that only a particular class of associate at Fleur de Lis was invited to. A class with better taste, at the very least, in music. And harder liquor.

She didn’t remember getting the tattoo the next morning, though she was uncomfortably aware of it the moment she woke up. It managed somehow to both burn _and_ itch, and it was grossly red around the edges when she peeled the gauze square back. Frankly, she was horrified. But, Bryony thought it was sweet. Objectively terrible at every level. But still, very sweet. The monospace font was stamped dutifully across the top of Celosia's foot in the neutral dark blue Bryony had long ago set her workstation to display code in. Mostly, anyway.

**Define** : Nonmonogamy  
non·mo·nog·a·my  
/ˈnänməˈnägəmē/

noun  
1\. a blanket term covering several types of interpersonal relationships in which an individual forms multiple and simultaneous romantic or sexual bonds.  
See also: infidelity

**Author's Note:**

> My sincerest apologies to anyone who was insulted by any of the following: Bryony as a questionable representation of asexuality in fanfiction; the really shitty cop-out used in place of actual relationship negotiations; Celosia's amazingly terrible infinite "loop." No apologies will be given for excess use of air quotes or the use of the words probably/probable/probability.


End file.
